Apple surveyed 1, 000 Americans as to whether they would agree to subscribe to a music streaming service for $7.99 a month. Only 10% said they’d be “very likely” to sign up, another 10% went with “likely, ” the Guardian reported.
Among Apple’s iOS users 15% said “very likely.”
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
That’s nothing to be ashamed of, according to Mark Mulligan, who conducted the survey and authored the report. He believes that “if 15% of Apple’s entire 500 million or so iTunes users were to subscribe, the subscription market would be transformed, growing the total number of subscribers by 75 million.”
The math is staggering, especially when it comes to making money on music streaming online: with 75 million subscribers all getting just the basic service, Applae stands to make $600 million a year.
All of which is music to the ears of Jimmy Iovine, who was hired last May to be Apple’s executive in charge of, well, they’re not sure, but it has to do with pushing sales, that’s for sure.
He’s also, apparently, in charge of poaching new talent from the competition. There have been reports of Iovine poaching Tidal music artists.
Tidal is a subscription-based music streaming service that combines lossless (no compression) audio and high definition music videos with editorial control. The service has more than 25 million tracks and 75, 000 music videos.
Tidal was recently acquired and re-launched by Jay-Z, who told Billboard magazine that Iovine and Apple are going after his artists to weaken the competition.
So Iovine combines the advantages of iTunes with some rough trade tactics to conquer the world. Apparently, already having half a billion subscribers is just not enough.
Of course, not all 500 million users who downloaded iTunes have bought anything through the program. But estimates are that 250 million have purchased music or other content, and that’s not a bad place to start.
“The iOS ecosystem is a rare asset that rival music services simply cannot compete with, ” Mulligan noted, adding that “even a year one target of a quarter of that would be transformational to the subscription market, but both numbers are far short of the approximately 250 million iTunes users who regularly buy music downloads.”
